by Jessa Archer
“I’m not sure,” Cassie said. “It was almost like I had to take it. The only reason I even went was because I…had this feeling. And when I realized what it was, something came over me.”
“What? The urge to commit a crime? Where did you find it?”
The last question was the one I had dreaded asking. I hoped…really, really hoped that she hadn’t been upstairs prowling through poor Edith Morton’s personal things. Clarence had been busy, obviously, but there was still a chance that someone could have walked in on her.
“I did go to the bathroom,” she said. “That part is true.”
“Okay.”
“And when I was coming out of the bathroom, my earring fell out. I swear. It was like fate.”
“Fate.” I looked at her skeptically. “Go on.”
“The earring practically flung itself across the hall and into Edith’s room.”
“How did you know it was Edith’s room?”
“It was full of old pictures and quilts, Mom. I can spot an old lady’s bedroom. Also, it had that…smell. Like baby powder and mothballs. Anyway, I bent down to pick up the earring and there it was.” She patted the diary. “Under the nightstand, wedged against the wall. It’s recent. The last entry was a few days ago.”
I finally picked the book up. Holding it away from my body as if it might bite at any moment, I carried the darn thing over to the table.
Cassie looked up at me. “Are you angry?”
I thought about that for a moment. Was I? “No,” I decided. “I’m just surprised. A little scared, too. Blevins knows Edith kept a diary. He mentioned it when I was at his house. Said Clarence thought it might contain a note or some clue. So…they could be looking for this.”
All of the color drained from Cassie’s face, and I instantly regretted sharing that bit of information with her.
“Blevins was in the parlor talking to Clarence when I came downstairs. Mom, either one of them could have seen me come out of that room.”
Even though I was freaking out internally, I tried to keep my voice level. “I wouldn’t worry about it, sweetie. A lot of people went upstairs to use the bathroom. Going into the wrong room isn’t a crime.”
“Blevins was staring at me as I came downstairs. Well, at me and Nick, who was waiting on the landing to ask me out.”
“Really?”
“Um…yeah. Just for coffee or something. But if Blevins was looking at me then, I’d only stepped out of the room like…a few seconds before.”
“Cassie, if they look for the diary and don’t find it, they’ll probably just think Edith threw it out.” I gave her a reassuring smile. “I really don’t think it’s a big deal. Was this the only diary you saw?”
She nodded.
That didn’t exactly jive with what Blevins told me, but I nodded. There could be multiple diaries, I guessed, but the one he and Clarence would be most interested in was the last one, since it would give them more clues about Edith’s state of mind. I’d have to find a way to get the stupid thing back into Edith’s house, but if I told Cassie that, she was going to insist that it was her fault and she should be the one to fix it.
“Listen,” I said. “Maybe we should keep this between us, okay? Ed would have our heads if he knew.”
That wasn’t entirely true. I’d never even heard Ed raise his voice. But I was quite certain that he wouldn’t approve.
“That’s why I didn’t want to discuss it in front of him,” Cassie said. “I was born at night, but it wasn’t last night.”
I rolled my eyes. “You were born at nine fifteen…in the morning.”
“You know what I mean.”
My stomach sank as I looked down at the diary. I hated keeping secrets. Work secrets were one thing. I’d kept plenty of sources confidential when I worked at the News-Journal. But personal secrets were different. Joe had obviously been keeping secrets from me for years, and look how that had turned out. I really didn’t want to start out a new relationship with Ed by keeping him in the dark about things. He deserved better than that.
On the other hand, it wasn’t exactly lying. If he came out and asked me whether my daughter had swiped Edith’s diary, I’d tell the truth. It still felt wrong, though.
“So…what did you tell Mr. Nick Winters?” I asked, mostly to change the subject a bit.
She shrugged. “He gave me his card. I told him I’d see if we had plans, because I hadn’t decided whether I wanted to yet.”
I wasn’t sure how I felt about this new development. Nick had seemed nice enough, but Sam Winters was a snake. Either way, I knew better than to voice an opinion. Cassie and I had danced this dance before. She was never the defiant type, even as a teen, except on the issue of the guys she dated. While it was possible that she’d outgrown that tendency, saying something positive about a guy had always been the kiss of death. Likewise, if I were to say I couldn’t stand a boy, she’d feel compelled to go out with him at least once, maybe twice, even if she totally hated him.
I reminded myself that Cassie was now a grown woman and fully capable of making her own decisions, even if I didn’t agree with them. That’s how this adult thing works.
Which was ironic, given that I was also planning to handle returning the diary she’d swiped. But that was different. She could wind up in trouble. And if I hadn’t told her what Blevins said about Edith seeing ghosts, she’d never have gone anywhere near that funeral. She was trying to help me, so if anyone got into trouble for this, it would be me.
“Well, we definitely don’t have plans, so it’s up to you. Something didn’t sit right with me about his grandfather, though,” I admitted, even though I was a little worried that even that statement might be enough to tilt her decision.
“Like what?” she asked. “I mean, other than the fact that his memory seems to be slipping, and he seems a touch racist.”
“Racist?”
“He said some guy was Mexican and a thief, and I’m pretty sure he was calling him a beaner when Nick led him back over to the chair,” she said. “Nick cut him off, but I don’t know what else he’d have meant.”
“Oh, okay. Didn’t quite catch that part.” I told her how Sam’s mood had changed, especially when I brought up Edith’s finances. “He went from light to dark like that,” I said, snapping my fingers.
“Could just have been a mood swing. Maybe he was thinking about something completely different. You know how old people can be.” A slow grin came over her face as she said the last part.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
She laughed. “It isn’t supposed to mean anything.”
“I’m only fifty,” I countered. “He has to be over ninety.”
“Fifty and fabulous,” Cassie added, as she headed for the stairs. “Don’t forget the fabulous part.”
“Where are you going?”
“To get out of these clothes and take a bath. Then I’m going to finish Ed’s book. Just a few more chapters to go.”
“Wow. That was fast.”
Cassie paused at the top of the stairs. “Yeah. He’s a pretty good writer.”
I felt certain she had an ulterior motive for her hasty retreat. She was going upstairs to read, leaving me down here to do some reading of my own. Edith’s diary lay in the middle of the table, taunting me. And as awful as it was that Cassie had taken it, there might be clues in there.
I really wanted to take a peek. But first I needed a glass of wine.
Or maybe two.
✰ Chapter Eleven ✰
Sometime around midnight, the dark clouds that had been hanging around all day finally decided to open up. Rain had lashed at my bedroom window for the past six hours, like a restless spirit trying to get in. Restless spirit pretty much described me as well. I’d spent about an hour before bed reading and then rereading Edith’s diary. There hadn’t been many entries. The leather notebook still smelled faintly new, and the first entry was on New Year’s Day. That made me a little suspicious that she beg
an a new diary each year.
It hadn’t taken me long to realize that Blevins was right about one thing. Edith Morton had been a haunted woman. By what or by whom, I wasn’t sure, but the diary entries told of things moving, of whispers in the night, and of visits from someone she called the boy, or sometimes the boy with black hair or the dark-haired boy. He was watching her. He was angry at her. He was sad. The entry that interested me most was written a few days before she died. This one seemed more personal.
My dark-haired boy came to me again last night. I see him everywhere these days, maybe because I know my time is short. He stands at the foot of my bed, watching me.
Sometimes, he calls me. He never speaks, but I know it’s him.
Only You. Unforgettable.
It’s All Your Fault.
And it is my fault. I never told anyone what happened. Of course, no one ever asked.
I always tell him to go away. That I’m sorry. To leave me in peace.
But he never does. His dark eyes will follow me to the grave.
Everything about that entry made me wonder if Blevins wasn’t right about her jumping. I just couldn’t get past the fact that the odds of that fall actually killing her quickly were fairly slim. She seemed like a troubled woman, but she didn’t seem stupid. I think she’d have found a smarter way to kill herself if that was her intent.
When I read the first few entries, I’d wondered if maybe she was suffering from an undiagnosed mental ailment. Alzheimer’s, maybe? I’d written a piece when I was at the News-Journal that discussed the hallucinations and paranoia that often accompanied dementia. But the more I read of the diary, the less that rang true. Edith’s writing was straight from the imagination of a Victorian gothic author. It was a somewhat rambling and repetitive tale, to be sure, but vividly written and error-free, recorded in a spidery but tidy cursive hand that I could never begin to replicate. You could tell a lot about people from their penmanship, and Edith’s didn’t suggest that she was crazy.
It occurred to me at one point that the diary entries might actually be fiction, that Edith Morton might have kept a ghost story bottled up inside of her all these years and only recently started to put the words to paper. But if it was a novel, it really didn’t seem to be going anywhere. And I seriously doubted that she’d call the sheriff’s hotline to test out her prose.
Her words followed me into sleep, and my dreams were filled with dark-haired specters and open graves and creepy old Sam Winters. I was glad when daylight, such as it was, finally arrived.
Still, I sat in bed for a bit longer, my knees pulled up to my chest as the rain hammered on and on outside. It didn’t sound like it would ever stop, and I wondered how high the river was. The town had flooded in the past. I was nothing more than a toddler the last time, so I didn’t remember anything about it aside from what my mother told me about watching cars float down the middle of Main Street like they were part of a rain-slicked parade.
Shaking my head to clear both the daydreams and Edith’s diary from my head, I resolved to get on with the day. I needed to go into the office and begin putting Wednesday’s edition together. And I also wanted to talk to Wren. After careful consideration, I’d decided to tell her about the diary. I wanted her opinion. She’d lived in Thistlewood longer than I had. Maybe she could help me figure out who this dark-haired boy might be.
After I showered and dressed, I slipped quietly past Cassie’s closed bedroom door and down the steps. She was still asleep, and I didn’t want to wake her. There was nowhere she needed to be, especially on a day like this. She’d probably sleep until noon if left unchecked, and that was just fine. That’s what vacations are for.
I put the coffee on before reaching for the can opener, much to the chagrin of Cronkite, who yowled as though he was approaching starvation. A typical morning. I gave him a quick scratch on the head and emptied a can of Friskies into his empty bowl. He sniffed it, decided he approved, and then attacked. Again, a typical morning, although he will on occasion, for no apparent reason, decide that he’s not in the mood for whatever I’m offering. I suspect he’s trying to get me to open a second can, thinking he’ll get a double portion. While I have yet to fall for that trick in the nine years he’s been with me, he seems to live in hope.
I took my coffee and went over to the sliding door. Even if I couldn’t go onto the deck and bird-watch this morning, it seemed wrong to drink that first cup when I wasn’t looking out at the woods. The yard was a sheet of rippling water as it rushed downhill and toward the creek just beyond the trees. Suddenly I was very thankful that I lived so high up. The cabin wasn’t much, but it was mine. I wanted to keep it.
There was movement at the edge of the trees, the slight rustling that I’d come to think of as Remy’s calling card. Sure enough, the cub bounded out like he always did. I smiled as I watched him frolic in the yard, kicking up water and mud. He looked happy. Carefree. For a moment, I envied him.
Where was my phone? I wasn’t entirely sure Cassie believed me about Remy, and this was my chance to get proof.
I found my purse on the kitchen counter and fished my iPhone out from the depths, praying that it still had a charge. It lit up when I hit the button, so I went back to the door as quickly as I could without stirring up too much of a fuss. Cronkite was still devouring breakfast. If he knew Remy was just outside the glass, the little devil didn’t care. Breakfast came first. Food before foes.
Sliding the kitchen door open, I stepped out into the rain. Remy didn’t seem to notice me. Raising the phone, I quickly snapped a couple of shots. He circled a few more times, then retreated back into the woods.
Once he was gone, I went back inside, shaking the rain from my hair. I looked down to check my photography, but that’s when my phone decided to give up the ghost again. Time to get a new battery. Or maybe a new phone.
But I’d gotten the picture. Or I was almost sure I had, at least. I’d charge the phone at the office and show it to Wren and Ed when I saw them. They’d both stopped by to visit when Remy was convalescing in my shed, and I was sure they’d be glad to see the no-longer-so-little guy all healed up and dancing in the rain.
✰ Chapter Twelve ✰
I’d just finished typing in the last few lines of a bake sale announcement and was thinking longingly about a mid-morning cup of coffee. The diner was one possibility, but Wren usually had a pot brewing this time of day, and I was sure she’d be delighted to caffeinate me in exchange for a peek at the photo of Remy. Just as I was about to close my laptop, however, the bell rang, announcing an arrival. I turned toward the door with a smile, hoping it was Ed, although it seemed a bit early for him to stop by. Usually he spent the morning writing.
But no. My visitor was Elaine Huckabee, and five minutes later, I was still baffled as to why she was in my office, sitting in the chair in front of my desk, sobbing uncontrollably.
I’d already handed her several tissues from the travel-sized pack in my desk drawer, so I just gave up and handed her the entire package. I waited while she blew her nose loudly, again, then promptly picked up the wail where she’d left off.
Elaine was, to put it politely, disheveled. Total wreck would also sum up her appearance quite nicely. Her red hair hung in clumps around her face, unwashed and unbrushed. If she’d had any makeup on when she left her house this morning, she’d cried it all away. I was fairly certain she was in pajama pants, and the rose-colored sweatshirt had seen better days, but probably not within the past decade. A black windbreaker that seemed too large for her was on the floor next to the chair, in the center of a pool of rainwater. Elaine doesn’t cry pretty, not that I do, either. Her eyes were swollen and red-rimmed. Every now and then, she would stop and heave in a long, shuddering breath, like she was hyperventilating. I was beginning to wonder if I should call an ambulance.
“For heaven’s sake, Elaine,” I said when the sobs subsided a bit. “Try to calm down so you can tell me what’s wrong.”
She hiccupped. I cau
ght a whiff of gin and wondered how much she’d poured in her orange juice this morning. Or maybe she’d been up drinking all night? Her eyes were certainly red enough for that to be the case, although that could also be from the river of tears she’d been spilling in my office.
When Elaine finally spoke, the words came out in ragged snatches, punctuated by sniffles. “Can’t stop…thinking about it. I keep seeing…that woman’s body…at the bottom of the stairs. I can’t…eat. Can’t sleep.”
She hiccupped again, making it clear that while she might be finding it difficult to eat and sleep, drinking was apparently going just fine.
“Sheriff Blevins…called me yesterday. He said it was to see…how I was doing. You remember how much…how much of a wreck I was…after I found her?”
I nodded, although it was clear to me that she was in worse shape several days later than she’d been the morning of the crime. Or accident, I reminded myself, even though my brain clearly had fairly strong opinions on the matter since it always veered toward the non-accidental explanation.
“He suspects me! I just know it.” Elaine blew her nose again. “He thinks I killed that old woman.”
Old woman. Something about the way she said it bothered me. Yes, Edith Morton had indeed been an old woman. Some might even say she was a very old woman. But it sounded callous, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that Elaine was only upset because she might be under suspicion. She wasn’t upset by Edith’s death at all.
And I was fairly certain that she was lying about the door being unlocked. While it was obviously possible that someone else stopped by after Dean Jacobs delivered the mail, it didn’t seem likely. He said that he’d arrived a little after ten, and I was at Wren’s just after noon. If there were no other visitors, however, either Elaine or Dean was lying—and I found our neighborhood mailman to be a much more credible witness than the sobbing mess currently hanging out in my office.
But if Elaine had a guilty conscience, why would she come here? I’m the sole newspaper reporter in Thistlewood, so it seemed a bit like a lamb seeking out a wolf. Was it because I had been there the morning Edith died? Was Elaine trying to convince me of her innocence because she was worried about Blevins and needed an ally?
